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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24042193">we're building a house of the future together</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel'>babybel</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Audio: Embrace the Darkness, Episode: s01e08 Father's Day, Gen, Journey's End fix-it, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Post-Serial: s121 Earthshock, Serial: s010 The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Serial: s039 The Ice Warriors, The DoctorDonna - Freeform, because some of this is still not written, there's a lot here but it's about donna healing!! and learning to trust her best friend again!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:14:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,428</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24042193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybel/pseuds/babybel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna remembers everything. If anyone's strong enough to carry those memories, that knowledge, it's her. They thought she couldn't handle it, but they were wrong. People tended to do that, be wrong about her. And as much as she wants her best friend back, she can't ignore that he took those memories away from her. So, a lesson in trust. </p><p>Donna builds herself a spacetime machine and sends herself on a tour of the Doctor's timeline, visiting each of his regenerations so she can see that he's worth trusting and worth finding again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minor or Background Relationship(s), Tenth Doctor &amp; Donna Noble, The Doctor &amp; Donna Noble</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>82</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prologue i</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic has been in the works for months, and it'll be in the works for months more, so I can't promise regular updates. I CAN promise I won't abandon it, though. It'll just take time. This is like a combined love letter to Donna, to her friendship with the Doctor, to the Doctor's character arc, to the whole show. Basically I'm stupid, sappy, and love Donna so so much.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They told her she was just forgetful. Classic Donna, losing memories. But it wasn’t just a few odd nights. It wasn’t even weeks. She’d turned forty-two a month and a half ago and she’d expected to be turning forty-one. An entire year was missing. They’d tried to explain it away. </p><p>Her granddad, eyes watery, breath condensing in the cold air on top of the hill with his telescope, had told her to please not ask him about this. Her mum, another conversation going on the phone held between her ear and her shoulder, had offhandedly told her that she’d never had a great memory, not even when she was little, and why she’d think it would get better with age Sylvia couldn’t guess. That evening at dinner Shaun had told her that she should maybe see a doctor. </p><p>She’d gone to bed that night unable to stop thinking about it. An entire year didn’t just disappear.</p><p>It was deeply disturbing. It made her skin crawl. She’d been alive and with agency and doing things for an entire year and she couldn’t remember any of it. What could get rid of that much memory? Why her? What had been so evil or important or secret that it had to have been taken from her? Or was it an accident? Perhaps an automobile crash, perhaps a coma, perhaps a vegetative state and a miraculous recovery, just sans a year. Thinking of the possibilities made her nauseous. The most hideous thing about it, though, was that everyone around her was acting like it was normal. The way her mum had reacted, she’d have guessed people were forgetting years left and right. And maybe she didn’t know anything, but she knew that this kind of thing didn’t just happen without reason. </p><p>She couldn’t sleep. She got up gingerly and with as little movement as possible so as not to wake Shaun, and then she went out to the kitchen, grabbing a notepad and a pen off her desk. She sat at the kitchen table and uncapped the pen with her teeth and stared down at the soft lined paper. </p><p>She was going to get to the bottom of this, and she wouldn’t need some doctor to figure it out for her. She’d do it alone, just her and her own defective mind. </p><p>She’d been having these vivid dreams, these joyful, horrible dreams; she’d start there. She knew that they weren’t real - they couldn’t be real - but it was better than nothing, and when she was in them she felt almost more like she was actually living than she did in real life. It wasn’t like she had anything else to go on. </p><p>So. Bullet point list. Things I remember from my batshit insane dreams. She smiled. She was exhausted. A glance over at the clock on the stovetop told her it was past one in the morning. But there was nothing a bullet point list couldn’t help; years as a temp had taught her that, so she set about it. </p><p> </p>
<ul>
<li><em>really cold. ground covered with snow, ice formations. at one of the poles? siberia? big hood on - could hear how it made my hair crackle in my ears when i turned my head. </em></li>
<li><em>girl told me i couldn’t tell the future(??) only she could</em></li>
<li><em>there’s someone i’m missing, there’s someone i’m really missing who was there in the dreams but i don’t know who it is in real life. did i make them up??? made up that girlfriend up in a dream before, wouldn’t be the first time i made someone up</em></li>
<li><em>shouldn’t be sad from not having someone that i knew in a dream here in real life. stupid</em></li>
<li><em>military base </em></li>
<li><em>woman in lab coat</em></li>
<li><em>weird guys in funny armor. weird heads. not human(?)</em></li>
<li><em>something about cars. cars were being weird. granddad in a car</em></li>
<li><em>private school</em></li>
<li><em>giant bee</em></li>
<li><em>absolute cracker spa with nice pool. sun on my skin like how you’re sitting there with your legs out and you can feel that they’re going to be burnt or that they’re burning but it’s so warm and nice so it doesn’t matter</em></li>
<li><em>i died</em></li>
</ul><p> </p><p>She stared down at the page, a chill creeping over her. She hadn’t really remembered that dream until now, trying to recall them all. She must have pushed it down, pushed it away. She could even sort of remember how it felt, and she added, <em> (car crash?) </em> after the initial bullet point.</p><p>Looking back up at the clock again, she shivered. Only fifteen minutes had passed, within those fifteen minutes she’d started to feel the emptiest and most lacking that she’d ever felt. She was missing more than memories, she was missing a part of herself. Half of herself. She tried not to cry. It was so frustrating. </p><p>She struggled to think back to Christmas. She’d had an ‘episode’, her mum’s words - honestly, Mum, episode of what? - and she knew in the back of her mind that it was important. Remembering was hard. She’d try to remember. </p><p>She could picture an alley, just sort of a regular, nondescript, paved passage between buildings. Or- street. Maybe it was more a street than an alley. And it was normal and she was normal; it was all normal except for the person on the street with her. Or was it the people? There had to be more than one of them, but the more she thought about it the more she could swear there’d only been one face. </p><p>Bringing her hands up to cover her eyes, she sighed. A respite from the kitchen’s one yellow fluorescent light was welcome; lights always felt too bright after midnight. She tried to focus on that street, and on that face. </p><p>It felt like she was climbing a mountain, and if she focused hard enough, tried hard enough, she’d reach the summit, and realize something that mattered. About halfway up that mountain, though, it struck her that she should probably go back to bed. That she was being ridiculous and stubborn just like she’d always been, and that it was a waste of time. </p><p>She was halfway out of the chair before she realized that those were her mum’s words, and she sat back down in quiet defiance. She, Donna Noble, would sit here for however long it took and figure this out if it killed her. </p><p>Deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus. Troubleshoot the memory, like you’d troubleshoot a tech issue at work. Right, so there was definitely more than one person chasing her in the alley. Chasing her? That was new, but she was sure she’d thought it for a reason, so she was being chased. More than one person, but only one face she could remember. She honestly had to make up her mind. Was it one person or several?</p><p>Pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger, she sighed. She was starting to get a headache. Then, her eyes snapped open. </p><p>Several people all wearing the same face. </p><p>Suddenly, she felt a terrible heat start up inside her skull, and she focused for some reason on the pen in her hands, observing it in great detail - the way the ink stuck to the tube down the middle of it, the way the light shone off its shiny transparent casing - before being thrown into something else. </p><p>It was like a shitty slideshow, content clearly there but going too fast to be really understood: the Racnoss, the Vespiform, the Sontarans, and yes, yes she could remember names now, the Ood, the Daleks, her best friend - her best friend! how could she have forgotten - and his ship and the two of them standing on that odd grate of a floor and his hands on her temples and <em> “I am so sorry, but we had the best of times” </em> and all of a sudden she was furious. </p><p>Her head was killing her, and she couldn’t believe that, firstly, it was all real. All of it. Secondly, that it hadn’t been her fault. She hadn’t just forgotten, she didn’t have that poor a memory. That year had been taken from her. She went back and forth, holding a little conversation in her mind; he took that from me. But he’s my best friend! But he didn’t even ask. But there wasn’t another way! But there’s always another way. </p><p>A different memory came to her then, a memory that wasn’t hers, stolen from maybe her granddad, or maybe her best friend. Could she read minds now? She could feel tears, hot on her cheeks. </p><p>
  <em> “If she ever remembers me, her mind will burn, and she will die.” </em>
</p><p>She shook her head, murmured a little, “No,” through what she hoped sounded like laughter, not that anyone was listening. </p><p>She was Donna Noble. She wouldn’t burn. And she refused to die.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. prologue ii</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>donna's mind... it amazes me sometimes...</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It hurt that first night, but it was nothing she couldn’t deal with. She was stronger than that. It would take more than that to knock her over. She took a couple of Advil and she waited it out, holding onto that stubbornness that made her her. She wouldn’t let this kill her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she didn’t. Morning came. The sun rose. She let herself relax the tiniest bit from how she’d been sitting, tense all the way through, in that kitchen chair. And, hey. She was fine. Little bit of a headache still, but in another hour and a half she could take another few Advil. To think the Doctor had thought this would kill her. She almost laughed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To his credit, he’d never met another Donna Noble before. Not just anyone could type a hundred words a minute; probably not just anyone could live with Time Lord DNA - because that’s what this was, Time Lord DNA - in them. Doesn’t mean she couldn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She stretched, rolling out her neck. And oh, she was tense. Couldn’t blame herself, though. She’d just remembered what should be impossible for her to know without dying a painful death. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Again, she almost laughed. He was so dramatic. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, god, it was good to be herself again. She smiled, and felt alive, not pseudo-alive, not what she’d been feeling for the past while. Her head was absolutely filled to bursting with ideas and phrases and places to go and facts and information and things to see and people she loved, but wait. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her first thought that had been truly, fully hers had been to find the Doctor again. That was pretty pitiful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She loved him; she couldn’t deny that. She loved him. Did she ever want him close enough to touch her again? Maybe not, although she teared up at the thought of getting to hug him. Was he going to have to prove that he was someone she could trust? Yeah, absolutely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had to see him as soon as possible, that was for sure. And he couldn’t know that she was testing him, or he’d start acting, and sometimes he was a good actor, depending on the circumstances. She couldn’t let herself be fooled. And she wanted to see him as he was, him when he didn’t know she was watching. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was part of a process, she told herself. This is how I’ll heal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She also told herself that she was completely justified in doing this. After what he’d done to her, it was her right to watch - because that was what she was going to do, watch - and to make sure that he was still someone she could trust, despite what he’d done. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, first of all, she’d need a machine that would travel in space and time, and-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Donna?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nearly jumped out of the chair, and turned to see Shaun. He was in work clothes, but he looked like he literally just rolled out of bed. “Hey,” she said, and felt suddenly like she was playing a part, and that anything she could say would be a line off a script. She was uncomfortable. This wasn’t meant to be her life. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re up early,” Shaun murmured, and he held his hand over his mouth as he yawned. He went over to the electric kettle and turned it on, and then started making toast. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, couldn’t sleep,” she said quickly, getting him the butter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You alright?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Donna flashed him a smile. “Course I am. Hey, I’ll drive this morning. Pick you up at six, yeah?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shaun frowned. “You’ve got to be to work before me, love. I can drive.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not going in today,” Donna admitted, and once she’d said it, it was real. She was actually doing this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What? Is something wrong?” Shaun fretted, coming over to her and holding a hand to her forehead. “Oh, you’re burning up.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, I’m not! Her mind leapt exuberantly at the thought of it. The fever would break soon, and her temperature would drop to considerably below a human’s normal ninety-eight point six. Made sense. After all, she wasn’t completely human. “Yeah,” she said, sounding regretful. She was so used to playing hurt and upset and sick for her mum it came naturally. She did feel genuinely bad about lying to Shaun, but really, when she took a step back and looked at him, all she could see was her cookie cutter husband from the library database, and it made her reluctant even to touch him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay home and take care of you?” Shaun offered, pouring tea. “Or I could make an appointment with a doctor, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t say you’ll call my mum,” Donna interrupted, laughing. “I’m really fine, Shaun, I just need to sleep this off. I’ll be right as rain by the time you get home.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re sure?” he repeated, touching a hand to the side of her face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She nodded, and handed him a napkin for his toast. “Yeah, I’m sure.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright.” He kissed her forehead. “I’ll just drive myself, you go back to bed.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, sir,” she said, hoping she could get a laugh out of him, make sure he didn’t stay too worried. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did laugh, just a little. “Alright, see you later. Love you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Love you too,” Donna replied, and waved him out the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She took a breath and buttered herself a piece of toast and gave herself a moment of quiet. Well, not quiet. Her brain was alive and thoughts were pouring through her at a mile a minute. To think that this had been silenced. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>First thing’s first, she would need something to get her through spacetime. Shouldn’t be hard to make a device, in theory. The Doctor would argue that it would be harder in practice, and probably that it would be impossible with her limited range of supplies and tools, but he’d never worked as a temp. You learned to be resourceful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Supplies wouldn’t be a problem, then. She wouldn’t let it be a problem. The problem would be whether or not she could finish it before Shaun got home, leave before he got home, and be back before he got home. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She shot a glance over at the clock. She had about nine hours. Yeah, she could do that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a quick trolley to the hardware store and a handful of cables and wires and screws. There was the hurried deconstruction of her phone - needed the microchip - and a scramble for pliers small enough to perform the required mechanical surgeries. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once she’d amassed everything she reckoned she needed, she spread it out on the living room floor and sat next to it, looking down at it. She wouldn’t be going for a TARDIS adjacent type of spacetime machine here; she didn’t have time. Those were grown, those took a thick chunk of a timeline to mature and she didn’t have that at her disposal right now. Those wouldn’t do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So. She’d go the vortex manipulator route, although a part of her recoiled at the thought of building one. Innate Time Lord prejudice, she supposed, and she decided she wouldn’t feel that again. She wasn’t one for prejudice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spacetime machine started coming together. It was going to be small; she didn’t have time or materials to make something that would enclose her physically. It would have to be mostly her, projecting a psychic shield to keep her safe from the whirlpools of the time vortex. She could do that, she told herself. She could do that. She connected circuit loops, she tied strips of copper together, she finally used the brain she’d been locked out of for so long. It was exhilarating. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the thing was technically complete, it was half past two in the afternoon. She had four hours, and she wasn’t finished. What she was looking down at was a zeppelin completely unfamiliar with flight, a submarine that had never known water. She had to introduce it to time before they made a journey together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was the part she was less sure about. Her DNA was of a completely unique structure, shared by no one in the universe, and only maybe one person outside it. Her DNA, in theory, should know time very well, that alternating triple helix double helix swing dancing through her body, but if that fell through, she herself had been inside the time vortex many times before. She could give that to the machine, make them greet each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>How, though, was the question. She picked it up. It was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and she figured she could strap it there, where it could feel the heartbeat in her wrist. How to give it part of herself… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Regeneration. That energy, that capability, that would pass on enough knowledge of time and space to the little thing. The stem, she thought. Spacetime machine. STM. That was cute. The prospect of killing herself within the next four hours, though, was not. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There had to be another way to draw on that well of energy. And she thought, and she put all of her Time Lord and human intuition towards seeking an answer, and she couldn’t come up with a single thing. God, she was frustrated. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to die,” she murmured out loud, picking the stem up. “How do I let you know what it’ll be like without dying?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looked at it, turning it this way and that. I don’t even want to change, she realized. I would rather die than change. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If there was a way to channel the energy, get rid of the possibility to regenerate in favor of conveying that information and experience to the stem, she’d jump on it. She racked her brains, trying to think of something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She held her hands out, palms facing each other. “Give me energy,” she said, and felt sort of stupid. “Come on. Come on. I need it, and I’m not planning on dying, so there’d better be another way.” She sighed, and clapped her hands together. Nothing happened but a slight burn on the palms, natural for a hard clap. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A thought jumped up in her mind. That heat, that sting or burn or whatever it was, was an energy conversion from the kinetic of the collision to thermal when her hands remained stationary after the clap. Regeneration energy had to be a form of energy, although what form she wasn’t sure. If she figured out how to get it, how to convert it to a usable form, she might be able to transfer it to the stem. It was a biological rewrite, every single cell burning up and starting again. There had to be atomic movement involved. Kinetic was as good a place to start as any. But regeneration wasn’t straight science. There was a celestial element to factor in, and a temporal element. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t know how she was going to do this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could just go for it without giving the stem any knowledge of the vortex. It was risky, but as time wore on it was looking like she wouldn’t have much of a choice. She had to go soon or wait until Shaun left for work tomorrow, and by then she might have talked herself out of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She put on her coat. She put a biscuit, still wrapped, into her pocket. Then she picked up the stem and strapped it on, standing in the middle of the living room. “Sorry,” she said to the device. “I promise I’ll give you a proper introduction later.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Closing her eyes, she focused. She visualized the timestreams of both sets of her DNA, and focused on the set that the Doctor shared. Just looking at his timestream - at their timestream, it was really both of theirs now - gave her a headache. It was so convoluted and so divergent, so looping and spiking and strange. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Best to start at the beginning, yeah? She selected a moment. She used the far past’s Doctor’s memories to identify the time and place, and the more present Doctor’s memories to fetch the coordinates, and then she relayed the information to the stem. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alright,” she said quietly, and hoped that the stem would still function despite the lack of familiarity with the time vortex. Well, she figured, it was going to have to. She pressed her thumb over the button that would tear her out of a fixed and markable place in space and time. “Here we go.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>first stop on donna's trip: the first doctor. or, more accurately, his granddaughter.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i am just FULL of love for one susan foreman</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Donna popped back into spacetime in a dingy alleyway, and when she said dingy she didn’t just mean a bit of grime and a bit of litter. The street was utterly filthy, stained with soot or dirt or something wall to wall. Everything was grey, even the sky. If this was London - and it really, really felt like London - she was in the wrong place. She’d been aiming for the planet Marinus. Maybe she’d ended up in the wrong time as well. It was stupid of her to have left without trying to calibrate the stem to the time vortex. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hauled herself to her feet and her body ached from going so unprotected through time. She rolled her shoulders out, and found herself staring at a poster pasted to the wall of the alley. Darkened by grime and that insidious grey that seemed to bleed into everything. She scanned it, and her first thought was that maybe it was a joke. God, she’d like it to be a joke. She knew it wasn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was white and it read, in large black letters, </span>
  <em>
    <span>EMERGENCY REGULATION. IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES IN THE RIVER.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A shiver darted up Donna’s spine, and she looked out of the alley and down what looked like a bank, tangled with overgrown weeds. She really didn’t want to see the river, but she knew she was going to have to, and she left the alley and took a look around. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was definitely London. The river and the opposite bank gave it away immediately. The water itself was dirty, and moving along slowly past her. There was something so off about it, though. It was London, but it wasn’t a London she’d ever been in. The air sat heavier on her shoulders. It was somehow both cold and stagnant, and there was a bad, almost metallic taste she couldn’t get off her tongue. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Before she could put a finger on what it was that was standing the hair on her arms up, though, she heard that familiar grating, whirlwind sound. She couldn’t stop a smile, and she ran to where she was sure the TARDIS had just landed. The noise of it, she thought, as she ran through dried grass and ruined concrete and, really, could this be London? brought a bit of hope back to her that she hadn’t even realized she’d been missing. She stopped just outside the courtyard she was sure the noise had come from, and carefully peeked around the corner of the crumbling old building she’d hidden herself behind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She knew that if she saw the Doctor - even if she talked to him, probably - the timelines would be her friend and he’d forget any little interactions they had before they were meant to meet that Christmas on her wedding day. The universe course corrects, the universe always course corrects. The Doctor wasn’t meant to know her before 2007, and the web of time would make sure it would stay that way. Nothing terrible had happened to her since she remembered, she realized. Maybe that was the universe course correcting as well. Maybe there wasn’t meant to be a world without Donna Noble, whole and intact. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In the courtyard, there was no TARDIS. There was no Doctor, either. She knew what each of his lives looked like now that she shared some of his memories, and neither the girl standing there or the bloke with her was the Doctor. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a strange scene, heavy with this sense of loss that Donna could almost taste. She kept on wondering if she was some sort of psychic now, just the tiniest bit. She could definitely feel something from the two young people, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Actually, it felt a bit like when- well. The last time she saw her Doctor. She didn’t like that, not at all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The young man reached out a hand towards the girl, and said, voice soft and tentative, “Susan?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The girl didn’t respond. She was still, staring at a patch of ground where nothing lay. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna realized that what she’d heard wasn’t the TARDIS landing, but the TARDIS leaving. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Susan? He knew,” the man said. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan had one arm wrapped around her ribs, hugging herself through a striped jumper. The other arm was at her side, something held tight in her hand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He knew you could never leave him.” The man, bless him, still had that hand outstretched. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After what felt like whole minutes, Susan reached back and took his hand. She dropped what she’d been holding, and the two of them walked out of the clearing together. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna wasn’t sure if it was, like she’d guessed, some weird latent psychic thing, or if it was the Doctor’s memories influencing her subconsciously, but her chest ached with the sense that something deep inside her had been unsettled. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She walked out into the courtyard, picking up what Susan had dropped. It was a key, small and silver and, oddly, warm. Not like warmth from the girl’s hand had seeped into it from the outside when she was holding it, but warmth from the inside, like there was something alive about it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wait,” she called, before she could stop herself. Maybe it was the warmth in the key pushing her to do it, or maybe it was her silly tendency to mother, to care. She jogged down the alley the two people had disappeared down. “Wait, you dropped something!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When she reached them, Susan turned first to meet her, eyes red with tears. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your key, you dropped your key,” Donna said, catching her breath. Lord, she was out of shape. Time travelling should sort that out, she figured; all that running. She held it out. “Here.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t need it anymore,” Susan said. Her voice was high, and affected with a strange, almost ethereal tone. She sniffed, and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “Perhaps I should bury it.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna looked down, and wondered if, in the future, she should just watch, only watch, and never interfere, because this didn’t feel very good. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I haven’t met you, you’re not from the base,” the man said, quick to distract from Susan’s tears. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No,” Donna adlibbed, “I’m not.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Are there other survivors out there?” he asked, and there was hope in his voice even though his face was smudged with ashes and dirt and his shoes were nearly worn through. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna realized that hope was because of her, and maybe even in her, and she wondered if this was what the Doctor felt like. And, because if there was one thing travelling the universe had shown her it was that humans had a beautiful proclivity for holding on and weathering, she smiled, and said, softly, “Yeah, there are. Course there are.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Susan-” The man turned to her, smiling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re not alone,” Susan said, smiling back. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We’re not alone,” he corrected.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan looked down, then turned slightly back towards Donna. “I suppose I should take my key. Thank you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, of course.” Donna handed it to her, and she asked, “What’s it go to?” even though she was pretty sure she already knew. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan sighed. “My home.” She turned the key over in her palm. “My old home, I mean. My grandfather, he-” She stopped. “Thank you very much for this.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t mind listening, if you want to talk,” Donna offered, almost under her breath. The air was so quiet here she felt she had to be quiet as well. “I should walk you back to your, er, your base, anyway. Bring back the location to my people, maybe set something up.” She couldn’t bear the thought of throwing a lie to them, so she resigned herself to looking for another group of survivors before she left this time to pass on the message. Survivors of what, she wondered, and figured it had to have been some sort of apocalypse, sky as grey as it was. Maybe nuclear. She hoped she wasn’t soaking up any radiation. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan was looking up at her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It struck Donna that she was young. Maybe even really young, maybe even still a teenager. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’re right,” the man said, and finally held out his hand. “David.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Donna.” She shook it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The three of them walked shoulder to shoulder for just a few paces before both the alley became too narrow and it became clear that David was the only one who knew where he was going, and he went a few paces ahead of the other two. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Without being prompted or asked, Susan said, quietly, “I know that he just wanted the best for me. You know how grandfathers are, don’t you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, I sure do.” Donna smiled, and knew that out of everyone in her real life - but then, which was her real life? didn’t matter, he was in both - the person she had to tell about this was her granddad. “Love mine to death.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan nodded, sniffed. “Me too. It’s just that he left me, and he didn’t give me-” She sighed, a quick little thing, so sharp it could’ve been left-over crying. “He didn’t give me a choice. What if I wanted to stay with him?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where did he go?” Donna asked, and she put a hand gently over Susan’s little shoulder, to give her a bit of support as they walked. Inside, she was growing cold. She’d pieced together that Susan was the little pride and joy topped with a black bob cut in some of the Doctor’s earliest memories, that she was his granddaughter. Unless she was reading this terribly wrong, what he’d done to her - taken away her life without giving her a choice - he’d also done to Susan. What if it was a pattern? asked the most skittish, spooked part of her. What if he did it over and over and over again?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Away. I don’t know. He promised he’d come back to me.” Susan sighed again, this time deeper and more evenly. “He’s not a bad person, he’s really not; I know he’ll stick to his word. It’s just that he could’ve asked me before he left me, I think.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I think so too, sweetheart,” Donna said, arm around Susan’s shoulders tightening. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d gone through the trouble of making the stem so she could prove to herself that the Doctor was someone she could trust again, and this really wasn’t a promising start to that endeavor. If anything, it made her trust him less, made the part of her that was vindictive towards him and that hated him - well, maybe hate was a strong word, but no, it really wasn’t, part of her hated him for what he’d done - grow. But she’d committed, and she was going to carry it through, because she also knew that he’d been her best friend. He still was her best friend. He deserved a full, honest chance, even if things kept going this way. Then she could at least say she tried. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The three of them walked the rest of the way to the survivor’s base in silence, and entered to find it mostly empty. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“People are still out,” David explained. “They probably will be until dark. We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to get rid of every last dalek.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna tensed at the mention of them, and shook it off. “What’s your plan?” she asked, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to carry that on to whatever other group she found as well. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well, the threat’s gone, really,” David said. “They won’t be doing any more large scale damage. It’s just cleanup now. Dalek cleanup.” He chuckled. Then he kissed Susan’s cheek and went off further into the building, calling back over his shoulder, “I’ll fetch you a map to bring to your base, Donna. Hold on.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s a nice guy,” Donna commented, once David was gone. She hoped that maybe it would cheer Susan up; she was reminded of Evelina, the girl from Pompeii. “Doesn’t look half bad either, does he?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan did smile, albeit very slightly, and she shook her head. “I really do like him,” she said after a beat. “And he’s so nice and very charming and he’s-” She looked down. “This is why Grandfather left me behind. He knew I’d want to stay and I’d be too scared to say it myself.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Still,” Donna said, not wanting Susan to go on thinking her being abandoned was entirely some holy act. “He could’ve talked to you about it. At least.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then, she said, “You remind me of a friend of mine, Barbara. Did you meet a woman named Barbara? She was here.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No, afraid I didn’t,” Donna answered, and searched the imprint she had of the Doctor’s memories. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I fancy you would’ve gotten along.” Susan said it like the thought of it was making her happy, and then her face fell. “I want to go home, Donna. I do so want to go home.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” Donna murmured, and it was all she could really say. She didn’t have assurances or comforts, the only one in mind - finally going back to her Doctor and telling him they’d better go and bloody visit his granddaughter right now or so help her god - quite far off. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>After a long time of casting her eyes around the warehouse room and occasionally wiping at them with her sleeve pulled up over her thumb, Susan said, “I figure I could turn this into a home, though, couldn’t I.” She took a few steps closer to the large, long table in the middle of the room. “Oh, but it could use a sweeping.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna chuckled, and, although she despised it, began to see why the Doctor had done what he did. Not that she’d ever do it, not without having a good long sit down chat with Susan first, but still, there was a touch of joy in Susan’s voice that hadn’t been there before. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll take all the bullet casings and melt them into mobiles and tossing jacks,” Susan resolved. “The war is over, we don’t need them. And there’s bound to be so many children who need a place to stay.” She turned back to Donna, and she was grinning. “I think I’ll be a teacher, just like-” She stopped, but only for a moment, and finished, “Just like I’ve wanted to be.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ll be smashing at it,” Donna said, and was about to say something sentimental like, </span>
  <em>
    <span>your granddad, he really loves you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but then she remembered she wasn’t obligated to defend the Doctor’s mistakes, and David came back into the room anyway before she could get another word in. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Here you go. Had to draw up a new one. There’s a few more safe routes than there was last time we made a map,” David said as he came across the room to her, pride in his voice. He pushed the piece of paper into her hands. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll pass it on,” Donna promised. “The two of you take care, won’t you?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Susan nodded, and David said, “You too. Careful out there.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna folded the map up and tucked it into her jacket. “Susan, if you want that key buried, I’ll do it. I’m already on my way out there, and I don’t want to risk getting you in trouble. It’s getting dark, it might be dangerous.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Susan replied, “but I’m…” She sighed, one last time. “I’m going to keep it. It’ll make a pretty necklace, don’t you think?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Donna gave her a nod, and a smile. “Alright then. Better pop off.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As she left the base, she heard Susan’s light, high voice introducing David to where she wanted to move the table, what she thought might be a better use of that corner there, and how many beds they could make up here for people who needed a place. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As she picked her way over discarded planks of wood and chunks of concrete, she processed it. The fact that the Doctor had done something nearly as bad as what he’d done to her to his own granddaughter sat sick deep in her chest. What was it about them that told him they couldn’t have a choice? What was it that told him he had to make a call, and there wasn’t another way?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But, then, Susan really had been happy. And she’d get happier, surely, as the hurt started to wear off. She was where she wanted to be, and that made Donna feel a lot better. Gave her a bit of hope. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As evening fell into night, she could see lights, tiny and golden, about a mile or so off, and decided to drop David’s map off there. And then onward and upward, she supposed. She still had a lot of the Doctor’s history to get through. So she trudged through the dull, dry grass and the rubble, unsure of how she felt, and unsure if anything she was going to see would be able to change that.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>find me on tumblr @lesbiandonnanoble !!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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